An interesting puzzle indeed. I see that you view your study as being of the name MINGAY and its variants. It is up to you whether or not you include MONGEY. I understand you to say that MONGEY is an off-shoot from one or more families in Ireland who have chosen (or the record keepers have chosen) to use that spelling. If that spelling persists, then, in my opinion it is a different name and outside of the scope of your study. Only if one or more descendants reverted to the name MINGEY, would you need to consider them and, only then to follow those specific branches back to your names - certainly not to cover the name world-wide. I see this as being similar to a family called BROWN who, a few hundred years ago, added an 'e' to become BROWNE - the names are different though may come from the same source. [I don't know how the SMITH study is handling SMYTHE.] Chris -----Original Message----- From: goons-bounces@rootsweb.com [mailto:goons-bounces@rootsweb.com] On Behalf Of mingay via Sent: 22 November 2014 22:45 To: GOONS Forum Subject: [G] Puzzled? Hi All, Having 'found' many MINGEY families in the USA Censuses who claim they orginated (c.1830/1840 ish) in Ireland where apparently some of the same people have had their name transcribed as MONGEY/MINGY. Note that 'they carry the spelling as MINGEY through to c 1940 in USA Obviously if MINGY/MINGEY that would 'fall' within my registered surname researches but what if it is actually MONGEY, do I 'follow' that path? Remembering there are very few images of original data so that I can not check the correctness of the transcription, also note this is the first time anything like MINGAY/MINGEY/MINGY has been asscociated with Ireland. I can see that DNA might help but that could a be BIG project for me. At the moment the whole research/follow up has been put on the 'back-burner' because of its 'puzzlement'. Any advice on the way forward would be grateful received. Regards Tony Anthony John MINGAY, now in NZ once of Kent & Suffolk, England but still researching Worldwide the surname MINGAY & its variants. http://www.mingayhistory.co.uk. _____________________________________________ RootsWeb lists - surnames, regions, software, etc http://lists.rootsweb.ancestry.com/ ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to GOONS-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message